The Stardance Trilogy Read Free Page A

saw her dance, just before she died. Both of them praised her warmly, for her choreography as much as for her technique. Neither offered her a position. I’m not even sure I blame them—I can sort of understand, is the hell of it.”
    Norrey could understand all right. It was her own defect magnified a hundredfold: uniqueness. A company member must be capable of excellent solo work—but she must also be able to blend into group effort, in ensemble work. Shara’s very uniqueness made her virtually useless as a company member. She could not help but draw the eye.
    And once drawn, the male eye at least would never leave. Modern dancers must sometimes work nude these days, and it is therefore meet that they have the bodies of fourteen-year-old boys. We may have ladies dancing with few or no clothes on up here, but by God it is Art. An actress or a musician or a singer or a painter may be lushly endowed, deliciously rounded—but a dancer must be nearly as sexless as a high fashion model. Perhaps God knows why. Shara could not have purged her dance of her sexuality even if she had been interested in trying, and as I watched her dance on my monitor and in my mind’s eye, I knew she was not.
    Why did her genius have to lie in the only occupation besides model and nun in which sexiness is a liability? It broke my heart, by empathic analogy.
    “It’s no good at all, is it?”
    I whirled and barked. “Dammit, you made me bite my tongue.”
    “I’m sorry.” She came from the doorway into my living room. “Norrey told me how to find the place. The door was ajar.”
    “I forgot to shut it when I came home.”
    “You leave it open?”
    “I’ve learned the lesson of history. No junkie, no matter how strung out he is, will enter an apartment with the door ajar and the radio on. Obviously there’s someone home. And you’re right, it’s no damn good at all. Sit down.”
    She sat on the couch. Her hair was down, now, and I liked it better that way. I shut off the monitor and popped the tape, tossing it on a shelf.
    “I came to apologize. I shouldn’t have blown up at you at lunch. You were trying to help me.”
    “You had it coming. I imagine by now you’ve built up quite a head of steam.”
    “Five years worth. I figured I’d start in the States instead of Canada. Go farther faster. Now I’m back in Toronto and I don’t think I m going to make it here either. You’re right, Mr. Armstead—I’m too damned big. Amazons don’t dance.”
    “It’s still Charlie. Listen, something I want to ask you. That last gesture, at the end of Birthing—what was that? I thought it was a beckoning, Norrey says it was a farewell, and now that I’ve run the tape it looks like a yearning, a reaching out.”
    “Then it worked.”
    “Pardon?”
    “It seemed to me that the birth of a galaxy called for all three. They’re so close together in spirit it seemed silly to give each a separate movement.”
    “Mmm.” Worse and Worse. Suppose Einstein had had aphasia? “Why couldn’t you have been a rotten dancer? That’d just be irony. This”—I pointed to the tape—“is high tragedy.”
    “Aren’t you going to tell me I can still dance for myself?”
    “No. For you that’d be worse than not dancing at all.”
    “My God, you’re perceptive. Or am I that easy to read?”
    I shrugged.
    “Oh Charlie,” she burst out, “what am I going to do?”
    “You’d better not ask me that.” My voice sounded funny.
    “Why not?”
    “Because I’m already two-thirds in love with you. And because you’re not in love with me and never will be. And so that is the sort of question you shouldn’t ask me.”
    It jolted her a little, but she recovered quickly. Her eyes softened, and she shook her head slowly. “You even know why I’m not, don’t you?”
    “And why you won’t be.”
    I was terribly afraid she was going to say, “Charlie, I’m sorry,” but she surprised me again. What she said was, “I can count on the fingers of